Category Archives: Theatre

Review – The End, Phone Box Theatre Company, University of Northampton Flash Festival, St. Peter’s Church, Northampton, 19th May 2016

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Not inappropriately, The End was the last of the Flash Festival plays I saw this year. Not only the end of my Flash experience – which had been thoroughly enjoyable – but also the end (probably) of everyone’s experience unless we all followed our instructions and made it to the safe zone. Confused? No need. Here’s the science bit: set in the very near future, the government released a vaccination to cure cancer; and though it was successful there was an unfortunate side effect – it killed 140,000 of the people who received it. I say killed; that’s not strictly true. The vaccine went on to cause rapid cell regeneration in the bodies, but the minds and the brains remained destroyed – yes, gentle reader, we have a zombie population half the size of Northampton.

But we, here in the church, are clean. We are healthy. We have undergone considerable scrutiny just to get inside the venue, with the gun-wielding Roach checking our bags (he made me unzip an empty compartment inside my bag, so glad he didn’t find anything suspicious) and the more gentlemanly Scruff doing a physical health check (he asked me if I had any marks on my arms, and was a little concerned at how long I took to answer, but I think I convinced him I was uninfected). Harper, the leader, is waiting for us at the end of the seats, with more questions and a frosty kind of welcome. You certainly feel unsettled, and even if you’re tempted to engage in a little giggle along the way, it doesn’t take long before Roach puts you back in your place with a gruff retort or a shove of his gun. This is not The Romper Room.

The only structural problem with this play is that, if you are one of the first to take your seats, it takes a long time to get going because everyone behind you has to go through the comprehensive security check. It very much adds to a sense of occasion and/or fear; but, in the end, you are sitting around, basically waiting for something to happen – although it does give you an opportunity to share your experience with your fellow zombie survivors. Once it does all get going it’s extremely exciting and thought provoking. Harper has a perfect plan for us all to escape; transport is arranged, and the route double-checked. However, sadly, the driver upon whom we were all relying has died and so we’re left with fewer chances of getting to the safe area. And it’s a helluva long way away too. The first stage is that we have to walk to Birmingham. That’s a big ask.

We meet the fourth member of the group, Faith, whom I’m sure was only given that name so that they could use the terrific joke about losing faith (No! She’s here!) Undercurrents of resentment abound, as Roach doesn’t believe a woman can do the top job, and Scruff resents Roach’s attitude, and Harper fights to retain her superiority, and Faith is offering us biscuits. When it becomes clear that Faith has actually become infected herself, Roach is all for shooting her there and then. But Harper intercedes and we discover that Faith and Harper are more than just friends; nevertheless, Faith remains a health hazard to us all and will die anyway. We’re all expecting Roach to shoot her – but then Harper does it. As far as the overall survival of the group is concerned, it was the only safe thing to do (even though she was so very nice to everyone). The play ends with Roach dismissing us all from the church, hollering at us to leave in no uncertain language, and as we leave the church to rejoin the outside world, we reflect that there is no zombie apocalypse after all (well, not at the moment anyway) and that we’ve basically left the theatre without giving them a round of applause.

The cast of four do a terrific job in keeping the tension and excitement up whilst still allowing for the injection of some humour, primarily through the delightful performance by Caroline Avis as the benign Faith who only wants to help and be supportive. I was really impressed by the no-nonsense attack and thinly disguised brutality of Daniel Gray’s Roach – Mr Gray really does do aggressive well. I was also very impressed by the performance by Connor McAvoy as Scruff; of all the cast I felt he was the one who most appreciated the situation we were all in and ran the gamut of all the appropriate emotions as our predicament worsened. It was a really intelligent performance; and he also provided a lot of the humour too. Matilda Hunt’s Harper was a naturally superior sort, every inch the queen of MI5, just about maintaining the authority she needed despite Roach’s Rottweiler tactics – another thoughtful and solid performance.

A memorable and disturbing piece. It’s hard to forget being chased out of a church by an intimidating maniac with gun telling you to f**k off, that really doesn’t happen every day. And Harper’s shooting of Faith with a deadly almost silent pistol was nerve-judderingly horrific. Now for that long walk to Birmingham – wish me luck.

Review – What If They Were Wrong, Two Funny, University of Northampton Flash Festival, Hazelrigg House, Northampton, 19th May 2016

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It seems to me that there are a few versions of the title of this play, but we’ll stick with What If They Were Wrong. Not that the title gives you any indication what to expect anyway! Oppression is a dish best served cold says the programme – for that you have to wait until the final scene, and even then I’d say it was served piping hot, but that’s probably a matter of pure semantics.

The performing duo of Benjamin Williams and Cynthia Lebbos call themselves Two Funny and, boy, are they right. This was one of the funniest hours I’ve witnessed in many months. Using the art of clowning, they tell the story of a couple. They meet at adjacent picnics; he takes her to a restaurant; they get married; they live in domestic…bliss?; and finally, fed up with his laziness and untidiness, she sends him to the dungeon. Yes, that’s right, they appear to have a dungeon in the downstairs of their house. Enunciating only a few words but with many communicative grunts and gestures, they tell the story with remarkable clarity and a fabulous appreciation for surreal and slapstick humour. Who knew that stand-alone words like “naughty” or “reduced” could have such hilarious effect when in the right context?

The audience involvement is considerable, which must be a quite a risk for the performers because they cannot know in advance how any one person is going to engage with them – and it really does require them to be fully participative! Audience members become a substantial part of the prop management department; they also become wedding guests, and even the vicar who marries the couple; one young man was required to read out a particularly lascivious extract from 50 Shades of Grey. But if either of these two actors came up to you and told you to make a fool of yourself in public – you’d just have to. They would be impossible to resist, such is the charm of their performance.

Mr Williams, in particular, gives an astonishingly physical performance, leaping up against the walls either side of the stage, doing one of the best banana-skin type pratfalls I have ever seen (particularly in such a tiny acting space), creating landscapes with his malleable facial features. At one stage I was laughing at whatever activity had just occurred, when he sat down on the couch in front of me and fixed me with his glare and just said “what?” – and it cracked me up all over again. But it’s not just clowning for clowning’s sake. Mr Williams wore one of those silly woollen hats with dog ear flaps that come down over your ears. If it came off or went askew he would scream with OCD distress until it was replaced perfectly – an excellent example of revealing a deeper character whilst still clowning. Miss Lebbos also has a brilliant physical comedy style, and I particularly liked her ability to break out of character completely and address the audience in a matter of fact way that you couldn’t quite work out if it was scripted or not. She looks all sweetness and light, so when she turns vindictive it’s a real shock to the system. And I certainly wasn’t expecting her to frog-march us all down to the dungeon.

Yes indeed, gentle reader, we had to get up from our seats in the Hazlerigg studio and troop down two flights of stairs into the dungeon, where she had imprisoned Mr Williams for some ritual abuse. (This is where the oppression bit kicks in). Upstairs she had seemed such a nice young lady, but in the dungeon she battered him maniacally with all forms of weapons of torture. Unsurprisingly, he wasn’t going to put up with that and, replacing himself with a member of the audience (who had to sit there, expecting torture, until the end of the play), went off with his chainsaw in order to track down the unfortunate Miss Lebbos backstage and arrange for her final entrance in two black refuse sacks. The piece ends with some spoken words of advice about how to handle anger management issues. A bit late for that methinks.

A thoroughly entertaining hour of loopy comedy. Nothing phased our two performers at all and they carried on the constant repartee with the audience throughout the entire show. A privilege to witness two performances of such great energy and creativity – I really loved it.

Review – The Show Must Go On, Lead Feather Theatre Company, University of Northampton Flash Festival, Hazelrigg House, Northampton, 18th May 2016

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There’s no escaping the emotion in this tear-jerking examination of cancer sufferers and those who are left behind. If, when you saw the title, The Show Must Go On, you thought of the Queen song fronted by Freddie Mercury, then ten points to you – and it is indeed a highly emotional lyric about survival against all the odds. If, like me, you thought of Leo Sayer, then lie about your age, take a minus mark and go to the back of the class.

Beautifully structured, we are presented with three interweaving scenarios. There is the story of Alice, a perfectly ordinary young woman, who still has to help her useless brother with his tie, and whose best friend wants them to sing (inappropriately) with a thrash metal band; she discovers she has cancer. There is the story of Tracy, kind-hearted and down to earth, married to Bill whom she loves dearly despite all his faults; she receives a ghastly diagnosis and hasn’t long to live. There is the story of Gareth, a feeble stand-up comedian who does his act sitting down, unable to face the future without knocking back too many JDs, telling progressively more upsettingly black jokes about the cancer that is going to kill his wife.

But it’s not all grave, if you’ll pardon the pun. The harsh reality of the subject matter is juxtaposed with several humorous moments – there is always going to be black comedy in such times. For me, the most successful was Jake Rivers’ brilliantly awful stand-up routine, carrying on with these desperately terrible jokes long after the initial humour had subsided, the agony of the character’s personal tragedy staring at us directly through Mr Rivers’ pained eyes. It was superb. All the scenes between Penelope May as Alice and Madeleine Hagerty as her friend Sally also worked extremely well, ranging from the carefree girls’ banter to the much needed loving support as the effects of the disease kick in, all done with great lightness of touch and true sincerity. The only scene which, for me, was not credible, was where two doctors were prevaricating about telling Tracy about her awful diagnosis. I appreciate it was meant to be black comedy, but, in my (reasonably limited) experience, doctors have no time to hum and hah about breaking bad news to someone. They just get on and tell you in your face and if it’s a shock then that’s tough. There was, however, a wonderful antidote to the doctors, in the form of Miss May’s portrayal of the Macmillan nurse, a character who was kindness itself, and which was accurate and believable in every way.

There were a couple of big pathos moments: Gareth’s conversation with the Macmillan nurse, when she hasn’t been informed that his wife has died – sincerely and emotionally performed by both actors; Alice’s possessions being packed away into sad little cardboard boxes whilst Miss Hagerty gave us a strong rendition of the title song. There were also references to both the late David Bowie and Sir Terry Wogan, which brought the continued relevance of how cancer is a part of everyone’s lives into sharp focus.

By the end at least two members of the audience were in tears. This was a play with a power and a passion and a message that addresses us all. It tugged on the heartstrings but I never got the sense of its being mawkish or self-indulgent; it hit just the right note. Three performances of great sensitivity were required to carry this material, and the three actors met that challenge superbly. Congratulations to all concerned!

Review – The Final Cut, La Zénna Theatre Company, University of Northampton Flash Festival, Hazelrigg House, Northampton, 18th May 2016

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The Final Cut is an astonishing, brave, informative, and emotional one woman show about Female Genital Mutilation. There. There’s no other way of saying it. In the tiny studio at Hazelrigg House, Elizabeth Adejimi conjures up a village in rural Nigeria, where tradition is compulsory and there’s no thought given to altering the practices of generations. Traditional garments hang on the washing line and by taking an item of clothing off the line and putting it on, she becomes some of the different characters in the village. Simple, but amazingly effective.

It’s all about Aminata, a young girl that Miss Adejimi brings to life with such a sense of juvenile fun. We see her in her school uniform, brushing the path, nicking the snacks, dancing to the music of the village. One word from her scary sounding mother and she’s worried that she’s heading for a smack. She gives us such an atmosphere of total innocence. She seems to have no idea what’s coming her way.

We meet her mother. A kind woman, a good woman. A loving mother and a good wife. Very traditional, she has always done what society has required of her and will ensure that she passes that tradition on. We meet her father, the hunter. In this remarkably matriarchal society, he plays no part in deciding how the daughter will be brought up. His job is to provide a home and food. And we meet the cutter – what other word is there to describe her? Again a traditional woman, who believes implicitly in the goodness of her trade, who recognises that her act is steeped in the mysteries of the past, and that she must continue to practice her art – even though she admits she doesn’t really understand why.

And finally we see Aminata again, dressed for the ceremony; scared, embarrassed, desperate for help or support from anywhere but it’s not there. She just has to yield to the tradition, lying on the floor, allowing her pants to be pulled off so the cutter can wield her knife; crying out with the searing pain; in tears of humiliation and abuse; left with as much dignity as she can muster, she has to get on with her childhood. Except that this is now seen as her becoming a woman. Probably at the age of about nine.

As you can imagine, this is an incredibly moving performance – Miss Adejimi takes us through all the emotions, of laughing with Aminata at her childish foolishness, warming to the mother as she offers us in the audience some snack refreshments in creole, fearful yet strangely respectful of the cutter lady; and finally sharing the agony and humiliation of the deed. It’s incredibly effective; she gains an instant rapport with the audience which guarantees that we are with her all the way – we feel her pain just as much as she does. You’d think this was a tough watch; but, actually, not a bit of it. Her characterisation of young Aminata is so delightful that we love spending time with her. It’s only that final, shocking scene that absolutely pulls you up sharp.

A recorded voice at the end provides some factual details about the practice of Female Genital Mutilation; at first, it seemed completely superfluous after the extraordinary emotion of that final scene. But actually it does serve a useful purpose to understand the myths and deceptions that are fed to the local people to make them comply with the barbarism. There was also a questionnaire that we were asked to complete, which did make you think again about the act directly after the play had finished, and was probably helpful in making the whole event educational as well as entertaining. And if it sounds bizarre to say the show was entertaining, then sobeit; I was hugely entertained by all the characters, the beautifully written script, and the whole presentation of the show. Admirable, brave, and superbly constructed, Miss Adejimi gives us a total tour de force. First class from start to finish. This little production deserves a life outside of this festival.

Review – Forever Looking Up, Illicit Theatre, University of Northampton Flash Festival, Castle Hill United Reform Church, Northampton, 17th May 2016

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If you thought the Mars One Project was a new way of calorie-controlling your chocolate intake, think again. It’s genuine – a project to establish a community of astronauts living on Mars. Crew One are scheduled to depart this earth in 2026, so if you want to volunteer, get your application form in now. Once you’re there though, there’s no way back, so the selection procedure for the best people is rightly arduous. Can you imagine what it would be like to go up to Mars in a rocket and know you will never come back?

That is the situation facing the characters in Illicit Theatre’s Forever Looking Up. They are the first group to head for Mars and have to come to terms with both the excitement of the mission and the tedium of being stuck in a rocket with people who you might not necessarily choose to spend the rest of eternity with. Whilst the Mars One project uniquely sets the scene, the issues facing our five heroes are largely the same that they might encounter in most closed communities. Apart from airlessness of course. And no gravity.

I loved the opening with its introductory video, allowing us to meet the five astronauts separately as they were interviewed for the camera. In just a few minutes you gained subtle insights into their characters that prepared you for their real life presentation on the stage shortly afterwards. I would say this particular footage was the finest use of video in any of these Flash Festival productions due to its originality and relevance. The next sequence in the show was almost contemporary dance in its format – with movements that suggested need and support, the confinement of individual thought and activity into enforced togetherness, and the emotional strains that the closed community would suffer because of their restrictions. I thought it was very well performed and I would have been happy to see more of it!

However, that would mean eating away at the time for the “scripted play” element of the piece, which would have been a shame. Once the astronauts’ responsibilities, characteristics and the basic plot have been established, it concentrates on two relationships between two people, and their repercussions on the wider group. Firstly: the blossoming love between Lily and Kaseem, which is against all the rules. The others snitching on them, telling the bosses that they’ve been kissing, felt like some kind of underhand sneak behaviour at school. I thought that was very sharply done. Second: the friendship between Zoe and Jessica, which builds well with Jessica showing pastoral care for Zoe’s troubled past – did she kill her mother? I think she may have. But Zoe misinterprets Jessica’s friendship for something more, and when Jessica reacts, horrified, at Zoe’s misplaced gaydar, the concord of the group is lost forever. Harvey’s solution to the Zoe/Jessica issue is final – although I understand in subsequent performances it might not be quite so clear cut!

It’s a very engrossing and gripping observation of a closed community imploding. I really liked the oppressive sense of a Big Brother somewhere out there, watching their every move, sounding his alarm whenever they went off piste. Technically, on the performance I saw, the backing music was too loud for the voices to carry sufficiently during those sotto voce private conversations. Nevertheless, I really enjoyed all the performances. The stage loves Sharni Tapako-Brown and she stood out like a beacon of brilliance in all her scenes. Even just in the diary scenes, when she’s not interacting with anyone else, she made the words come alive. And her conflicts of emotion with Zoe were stunning. Talking of whom, Sophie Guiver invested Zoe with a really strong personality, enigmatic with her past and the reasons why she left earth; and calculatingly vindictive after the misunderstanding with Jessica. She has a great stage presence and very confident delivery and I really enjoyed her performance.

As the senior chap on board, Charlie Clee’s Harvey quickly reveals himself to be much more fragile a person than you would like to be in charge. Awkward, nervous, and lacking in the personal charisma to be the authoritative figure that you would need to be at the helm, I thought Mr Clee did a great job in conveying those personal limitations and failures in what must have been a very hard role to grasp. Normally he doth bestride the stage like a Colossus, so it was riveting to see him portray so different a character. Vandreas Marc and Yolanda Lake made Kaseem and Lily into a very believable couple who start to come together and then start to fall apart. They were also particularly graceful in the movement sequences.

An absolutely fascinating piece that takes common themes of everyday life and projects them up into space, providing the added stress that the Mars One mission would definitely place on relationships. Intriguing and thought-provoking, and beautifully acted throughout. Congratulations to all concerned!

P. S. My spelling and grammar nerves were jagged by the time I’d read some of the company’s promotional material. I’ve honestly never seen so many mistakes on the printed page! I wouldn’t mention it but it’s a real bugbear of mine. Next time guys, get a good proof-reader. I don’t mind doing it for you!

Review – 100 Acre Wood, Nonsens!cal Theatre, University of Northampton Flash Festival, Castle Hill United Reform Church, Northampton, 17th May 2016

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Deep in the Hundred Acre Wood, where Christopher Robin plays, you’ll find the enchanted neighbourhood of Christopher’s childhood days. Hmm. I reckon that if your enchanted neighbourhood was made up of the inhabitants of this household, any Christopher Robin worth his salt would run a mile. But there is a link between A A Milne’s cuddly cosy children’s characters and these four troubled beings – they’re all (loosely) based on Christopher Robin’s pals. It’s a clever device and works very well, although the play itself is enjoyable and engaging enough to stand alone without any reference to Pooh.

When we entered the auditorium, Eddie was seated at the front of the stage, nervously waiting for an appointment with his counsellor where we discovered that he has had a breakdown following the death of his father in Afghanistan. Behind him, three oafs in a bed, which made an amusing contrast, but you appreciated absolutely why Eddie was anxious about returning back to the house-share with what would likely be not terribly understanding mates. However, he does pluck up courage and return home, and during the course of the play you see him attempt to re-integrate back into his old society and also see how his domestic partners (the aforementioned oafs) also have their own devils to cope with. There’s the neurotic and tidiness-obsessed Rachel, with her cleaning routines and her minute repositioning of furniture; the hale and hearty but prone to anger Tommy, who tries to bully the rest of the group into doing what he wants; and the apparently carefree William (Trespassers William, perhaps?) who suddenly becomes aware that his voracious appetite is not just something to entertain others with but is a serious health problem – both mental and physical.

I don’t know if the cast remember the TV series The Young Ones (surely they’re too young) but it strongly reminded me of that show with its wayward household of lovable miscreants, who lived in a surreal house with a talking fridge and other soft furnishings with opinions. 100 Acre Wood also has cupboard doors with a mind of their own and a talking fridge – no special effects, just an actor with a door in front of his face. It was so silly that it was very funny – but never over-the-top so that it got in the way of the serious message of the play. It also has a really well written and spoken sarcastic and surreal narration. There’s a lot going on there! No wonder Rachel was so neurotic. Freedom for eggs!

The cast gelled together extremely well and gave a really strong performance throughout. I thought Jared Gregory carried off Eddie/Eeyore’s general moroseness with great aplomb; that first scene, in particular, I found very moving and absolutely believed in the character’s plight and distress. His sense of embarrassment, and his simple inability to express himself was really well conveyed. Top work sir! I also thought Kieran Hansell was excellent as William/Pooh, channelling his inner James Corden with his hail fellow well met façade, hiding further distress. The scene with the honey (or hunny, I suppose) was one of those Ayckbournian moments when you start laughing heartily at what is ostensibly a really funny moment then the laughter catches in your throat as you realise you’re watching someone fall apart. There were opportunities for that scene to be played even more – shall we say… distastefully – and on reflection I think that discretion was the better part of valour.

Danni-Louise Ryan’s Rachel/Piglet successfully made us feel anxious with her own anxiety, fluttering around the set cleaning and moving things, never able to relax, lacking the courage and/or character to join in the lads’ fun, but not wanting to anyway because of the mess they would make. There was a wonderful scene between her and Mr Gregory when she suspects that he is plucking up courage to confess lurve, but in fact what he wants to tell her about his therapy. It was both funny and sad, as neither got to give or hear the message they wanted to convey. There was an excellent stagecraft moment when some paper cups that had been sent flying in an earlier scene and landed by Mr Smallmind’s feet, were retrieved by Miss Ryan for a later scene. And we just thought she’d forgotten to pick them up earlier, more fool us. I also enjoyed the robust performance by Elliot Holden as Tommy/Tigger, bouncing around the room and leaving a path of destruction in his wake. His was perhaps the character with the least light and shade to it, but he has great stage presence, and I loved his confidence and the clarity of his voice, which is something never to be underestimated!

A really good mix of the surreal and the harshness of reality, producing four excellent performances and hugely enjoyed by the audience. Definitely one of the best shows of the festival!

Review – Red Inquisition, Memoir Theatre, University of Northampton Flash Festival, Castle Hill United Reform Church, Northampton, 17th May 2016

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When I was growing up, the fall-out from American McCarthyism was still a Pretty Big Thing. He was the paranoid senator who interrogated creative artists to sniff out subversive communists from within their midst. To what extent the “red threat” was a real danger to America, or was just the paranoia of the times, is probably a matter of conjecture. For good measure, he also encouraged discrimination against homosexuals too, so he was obviously an awfully nice chap.

I always really enjoy plays, songs, films, books and so on that examine their own creative process – often it is the spark of creative genius. Spandau Ballet’s True is about how to write the song “True”. The French Lieutenant’s Woman (particularly the film) is all about how to make the film of “The French Lieutenant’s Woman”. Red Inquisition starts with our three actors discussing the benefits or otherwise of their new rehearsal space (which just so happens to be the space we’re sitting in) and what the subject of their new show will be. For me, this sense that the actors are sharing the same experience as the audience (and vice versa), living in the same surroundings, and breathing the same air is the stuff of theatrical electricity; and I was instantly captivated by that opening scene – which was also extremely funny, with all three performers demonstrating terrific comic ability. They consider a number of possible themes for the new play, running them up the flagpole to see if anyone salutes, until they discover a book about McCarthy and his witch hunts. The subject matter fascinates them – and a show is born.

It is indeed fascinating material; and they’ve dug deep into the archives to find footage of three particular McCarthy victims – Lena Horne, Arthur Miller and Charlie Chaplin. Three people who, by virtue of their creative genius, totally changed the world. Relevant video footage is compared with the actors’ own interpretations/impersonations of these people, bringing black and white memories sharply into today’s focus. I would say that it was much more effective when they were reviving live performance, such as Ciara Goldsberry’s beautiful singing of Lena Horne classics, or Jaryd Headley’s accurate recreation of the Chaplin gait; less so when they simply repeated scenes on video that they had already acted out. Mr Headley gave us a strong and moving portrayal of Chaplin, the effect of which was weakened by the on-screen repetition of the same words. We didn’t need to see that proof, we already believed you!

Daniel Hadjivarnava had the toughest job trying to make Arthur Miller come to life, because, as the video footage showed, in real life he was a very dull man! It may sound like a back-handed compliment to say that Mr Hadjivarnava portrayed Miller with considered accuracy, but actually I was very impressed with the way he captured him. Ms Goldsberry conveyed Lena Horne’s immense dignity and star quality with excellent understanding and insight; and Mr Headley absolutely brought Chaplin to life with his rather neurotic watching of old classics and tentative trying-out of new routines, needily relying on the support of others. He was also absolutely 100% confident in his delivery of every line and was a pleasure to watch.

There was a joke about Uta Hagen: four things I didn’t know about her. It sent the (majority of student) audience into paroxysms of hilarity. My fellow blogger and I sat in stony silence. Was it an in-joke? Or were we just stupid? The latter I can entirely believe. If it’s the former – don’t alienate sections of your audience into feeling like second class citizens, it doesn’t make them feel valued! I also thought there was a missed opportunity to make the content more relevant by concentrating on Miller’s Death of a Salesman and not on The Crucible, his allegory about McCarthy. Maybe they thought it was too obvious?

The choice of video at the end was inspired, powerfully showing how all these great talents triumphed through their adversity and regained their reputations and honour in the long run. Quite right too, a very positive and uplifting note on which to end. Fascinating subject matter given thoughtful treatment and with some excellent performances. Most enjoyable!

Review – Him, Just Bear Theatre Company, University of Northampton Flash Festival, St. Peter’s Church, Marefair, Northampton, 16th May 2016

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I’m going to add an additional first paragraph to the words I had already decided to write about this production, because, beforehand, I simply didn’t understand the play but now I have read someone else’s review of it, I could kick myself for having been so obtuse. The play now makes much more sense to me. However, I didn’t get it at the time, and there’s no point pretending I did. So, with that little aside out of the way, here are my original thoughts about Him. And I only wish I could be more generous.

As Snoopy might have written, it was a dark and stormy night… But there is an old church that serves as a refuge for Happy; he has done his best to make it comfortable with a music system, a kettle, a sofabed and his girlfriend – Her. Three portentous knocks at the door disturb their domestic peace. Fearing the worst, Happy gets the girl to run and hide before the intruder finally enters. They don’t recognise each other at first, but eventually Isaac (the new arrival) reveals that he does indeed know Happy and they go back… way back when. Quite what their previous relationship was we don’t really know. I think it involved Her, but it might not be the same Her as this Her. Eventually, when Happy is satisfied that there is no danger and he wants to introduce her to Isaac, he goes and brings her back on stage.

And that, gentle reader, is the point at which you either love this play or you find it so unfathomable that the temptation is to give up trying to understand what’s going on. Now, believe me, I do appreciate the enormous amount of time, effort, originality, talent and so many other excellent elements that go to make up the creation of a live performance. And I am the last person to want to discourage or take pleasure in anyone’s failures. I will always look for the good things in a theatre performance because I want to enjoy myself and it’s the good things that help you do that. But if, at the end of the day, you conclude that you really didn’t enjoy it at all, there is no point keeping a review blog unless you say so. Alas.

Back to the play and the reappearance of Her. As your loyal and faithful reviewer, I did my utmost to keep up with the nuances of the writing; but what you’re presented with is something, on the face of it, so ludicrous, that I really had to battle to keep engaged or find any positives. All I can say for certain is that she is not her as we have known Her. She may be a metaphor for… something? She may have different significance for different people. She may be real to one and false to the other. Or, the whole thing might just be Theatre of the Absurd in extremis. I like to think I wouldn’t have been one of the people who walked out on the first night of Waiting for Godot, but maybe I would…? And why Chuck Berry? Maybe I was supremely slow on the uptake on this one, but I would have liked to have been thrown just some tiny morsel of understanding – give the audience a break, guys!

Jack Alexander Newhouse spoke Happy’s lines so quietly overall that it was really hard to make out much of what he said – and I was sitting in the second row of pews! Surely from the back of the church it would have resembled a silent movie. His facial expressions were good but again minimalistic so you got precious little sense of drama. It was as though you were observing someone’s conversations from a long way away, when you wouldn’t expect to get any sense of what they were talking about. Neizan Fernandez Birchwood’s projection as Isaac was stronger and clearer – although I would still have liked more – and I liked his subtle questioning of his friend’s sanity when Her returns. But that I’m afraid was not enough to sustain approx. 75 minutes of bewilderment.

Ask yourself this question: you are seeking shelter on a cold and stormy night; you find a church; you say to yourself, this could be the perfect place to spend the night. You walk up to the door. What do you do? What I would do is try the door handle. If it is locked I would sigh, leave and find somewhere else to shelter. If it was unlocked, I would slowly open the door to make sure I wasn’t disturbing some service or vigil, and if it appeared to be unoccupied, enter. What I would not do is to thump, portentously, three times on the front door to be allowed into an unlocked church by people you don’t even know are in there. So why did Isaac do that? If there’s a good reason, then it shows that I really didn’t understand the plot at all; if there isn’t a good reason, then…why add further to the incredulity of the whole play?

Regrets to everyone involved but this really did not do it for me at all.

Review – Altered, Faux Pas Theatre, University of Northampton Flash Festival, Castle Hill United Reform Church, Northampton, 16th May 2016

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This fascinating play tells the true story of Beth Rutherford, a 19 year old girl suffering work related stress. Her father suggested she consulted a counsellor; but, for whatever reason, using hypnotic techniques, the counsellor implanted false memories in Beth’s brain. She managed to convince her – and Beth convinced the rest of the world – that her father had repeatedly abused her since childhood, had made her pregnant and then had carried out an abortion using a coat-hanger. Fortunately for the Rutherford family, history relates that the father was exonerated in the case; but the reality of what effect “bad therapy” can have on people provides a lasting topic for reflection long after curtain down.

The scene is set with some very familiar sound effects – hearing the Rutherford family make endless attempts to record their phone answering service greeting. We’ve all been there. It’s the sound of a happy family; giggling girls making a mess of it all, not taking it seriously, deliberately getting it wrong. It’s the sound of a normal family. That’s one of the reasons why, when it appears that Beth’s father has committed these awful acts, it all feels very shocking. The passing of time is noted by changing the letters on a scrabble board at the front of the stage. In fact, the scrabble pieces play a major part in the identity of the production – both the name of the play and the theatre company use this imagery – I guess because, like false memory syndrome – the scrabble tiles can be manipulated to create many different words and meanings.

The play is structured round the sequence of meetings between Beth and her counsellor, interrupted by various other scenes that attempted to illustrate other examples of wider memory failure. Some of these other scenes relied heavily on a degree of flippancy that I felt was at odds with the main theme of the play. For me, rather than dovetailing nicely or cleverly highlighting underlying themes, they clashed and provided too great a juxtaposition between Beth’s troubled mind and total slapstick. I appreciate that they were well performed; they just still rather irritated me if I’m honest. The fish, in particular…. Let’s just say I was happy when the fish finally had his chips. I’m perfectly happy to accept that this is a problem with me than with the performance.

One thing’s for absolute certain – it’s a stunner of a performance from Sophie-Rose Darby as Beth. There she sat, her eyes expressing that numb pain you have when you can’t join the links up in your brain to find a solution to whatever the problem is; undecided whether to find the counsellor’s attempts to draw her out constructive or intrusive. Her horror at her self-discovery at those terrible truths (that aren’t) locked away deep inside was very movingly portrayed. There’s a very difficult scene where she plays both sides of a confrontation between Beth and her father and she does it immaculately – unrushed, deliberate, superbly emotional. Her every line was spoken with complete conviction. At times she reminded me of Sheridan Smith. In common parlance, she nailed it.

On the other end of those conversations, Megan Burda was also very convincing as the counsellor, with apparently no axe to grind and no ulterior motive behind the structure of her questions, but you start to raise eyebrows to yourself as she gently introduces suspicions and inaccurate imputations from Beth’s responses. Surely someone who appears this genuine couldn’t possibly be deliberately introducing poisonous thoughts…could they? The remaining cast members – Aoife Smyth, Ellen Shersby-Wignall and Lucy Kitson, gave excellent support in their sketches and routines; and the poem, which brings the show to a conclusion, was very telling and beautifully performed by everyone. Certainly a play that makes you think twice and tells its story compellingly; an appropriate choice for Mental Health Awareness Week.

Review – X or Y, Infuse Theatre Company, University of Northampton Flash Festival, Castle Hill United Reform Church, Northampton, 16th May 2016

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I’m dipping my toes even further into the murky world of student drama, encouraged by my friends and co-bloggers Mr Smallmind and Mr Mudbeast. This is my first experience of the Flash Festival, an annual season of plays devised and performed by 3rd year students of drama at the University of Northampton. It’s a major part of their course, indeed it’s their dissertation, and so the performances are judged as part of their degree process – so it’s very important. Think of the jury final at Eurovision but with less glitter. Over the course of the first four days, I ended up seeing ten of the thirteen plays on offer and will write about each one individually in the order in which I saw them.

X or Y takes a witty and emotional look at transgender people, both from a historical point of view and also right up to date. It starts with the early court case of Ernest Boulton and Fred Park, who, as Stella and Fanny, were arrested for indecent behaviour in 1870 as a result of their transvestism and soliciting men. We see the witnesses, the judge, the lascivious doctor who gets too much pleasure from their physical examination, and the court’s final judgment. These scenes are interspersed with individual monologues from trans people, who you certainly sense are the real words of real people today, talking about their experiences of living within their own, alien, bodies and also how their families and society as a whole treat them. There’s also a projection into the future about what a baby-selecting clinic in the year 2041 might look like – and it’s pretty grim viewing!

It’s fascinating subject matter and it was treated with immense dignity and sensitivity, even though there was plenty of humour and physical comedy to enjoy. For me there were two major strengths to this production. The first was the ensemble work of the cast, marching in time (chiefly to Blur’s Girls and Boys, nice touch) as they reposition props and chairs with immaculate accuracy between each scene, everyone helping each other with their onstage costume changes which gave the whole show great pace and fluidity. The other strength was the truly devastating nature of those individual monologues. Each speaker would stand somewhere on a pink and blue line across the stage to indicate their position on the trans spectrum, and without fail each of the accounts of life as a transgender person was extraordinarily moving. There’s a sting in the tail too, reserved for the final scene, which really adds to the emotion.

There was a “dream sequence” – that’s the best way I can describe it – where the cast develop the story through movement and physical theatre; I have to admit I wasn’t entirely sure what they were trying to achieve here and, catching the eyes of the performers, only two of them seemed to be 100% confident in what they were doing. Apart from that, the energy and rhythm of the piece were perfectly maintained throughout.

The cast were uniformly excellent; highlights included Rhiana Young for the beauty of her monologue, Grace Aitken for her ability to switch from comedy to serious in an instant, Stephanie Waugh for the relish with which she tackled the vile doctor, Annalise Taylor for that scary receptionist and Kathryn McKerrow for her sheer all round stage presence. (Forgive me if any of those names are wrong – it took a mixture of research and guesswork to establish!)

Great use of music, perfect ensemble work, and really thought-provoking material. At least one member of the audience was sobbing at the end, proof that the performance could really hit your own personal emotions hard. This is one of those great shows where you can leave the theatre a different person from the one that went in, and that’s a real triumph. If you missed it at the Flash Festival, you have another chance to catch it in July at the Bedford Festival.